So he said, chaffingly: "Do I interfere with your thinking?
I hope not.

But if I offend that way, speak but a word and I disappear like a shot." "Oh! no," she answered.

"How could you interfere?
You are part of it.

You started it, you see, because you are going to India." Whereat, failing to catch the sequence of ideas, male vanity plumed itself, tickled to the point of amusement.

For was not she a child after all, transparently simple and candid, and very much a woman-child at that! Tom turning on his side raised himself on one elbow, smiling at her with easy good-nature.
"How charming of you to adopt me as a special object of thought, and care so much about my going." But patronage proved short-lived.